You’ve finally made the decision to join many of your fellow companies by adding an online sweepstakes or contest to your future marketing plan. Since you’ve reached this point, you probably are asking yourself, “How do I run an online sweepstakes or contest?” First you need to identify your audience, outline your goals, pick a platform, and assign a budget, and then you might be asking yourself, “What do I do next?” Below is a check list of things that you will need to focus on to get your sweepstakes or contest off of the ground successfully:

• The Concept: The ideation process is very important to make sure that you grab your audience’s attention to get them interested in participating in your campaign.

• The Creative Design: What is the look and feel of your campaign? How will you incorporate your message in the design of your sweepstakes microsite? There are a lot of things to consider during this process.

• The Programming: How do you plan to collect the data entered by your consumers? Are you planning to send thank you for entering or reminder emails to your participants?

• The Legal: Although not as fun and “sexy,” this is one of the most important elements of your campaign. You really need to outline the legal parameters of the promotion and offer entrants clear and concise rules. Also, are you going to need to bond and register your promotion based on state guidelines?

• Customer Service: Did you plan to answer consumer inquiries during the campaign, or provide access to winners lists at the end?

• Winner Selection, Notification and Verification: Playing Santa Claus is definitely a fun part of the promotion, but making sure your potential winners meet all of the sweepstakes eligibility before you award the prize is imperative.

• Prize Fulfillment: The winner has been cleared and now it’s time to deliver their prize. But wait, is the prize over $600? You are planning to send the IRS and the winner a tax form, right?

• The Metrics: So, how did it go? Without setting up the appropriate metrics, how will you know?

This list is just a basic outline of what is needed to run a successful sweepstakes or contest as there is much more involved. Hereis another of our blog articles that might also be helpful to get you started.

We get calls all of the time from first-timers looking for information and what steps are needed to create their campaign. It can be initially overwhelming when you hear all of the things that go into putting together a sweepstakes or contest. That’s why we are here to help. At Sync, we will put together a program for you that will clearly outline what is needed and offer services that allows us to manage all or some of your campaign based on your needs.